Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Border Security) Regulations 2023

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Fox

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to move my fatal amendment on the border security minimum service levels regulations. I will be very brief in doing so, in the interests of progressing the business of the House, particularly given the fine balance of our numbers. I am not going to repeat all my previous statements and arguments but, for the record, that does not mean that I am in any way withdrawing any of them.

I agree with virtually everything that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, just said about these being, in some ways, the strictest of the regulations before us today. Some 70% to 75% of staff are losing the right to strike; in many smaller places, there is effectively no right to strike. We are taking that right away from people. However, that would really be a stronger argument for my fatal amendment. In that context, the regret amendment does not really achieve anything, as I have said before. I will, however, just reflect on one comment that the Minister made, repeating statements that the Government have often made before. If the Government are committed to conciliation for national disputes, this is a kind of rhetorical question, but it is worth asking. Can the Minister confirm how he can speak for future Governments, because these are the regulations we are laying now?

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, this is perhaps the most curious of the three statutory instruments aimed at particular sectors. I say that because it seems that the Government have chosen to pick a fight with one of the groups of public sector workers with which, to my knowledge, they do not currently have a full-blown dispute. Perhaps there is one coming; perhaps that is why Robert Jenrick has just resigned. He must know something that we do not. Given the choice of sectors, why did the Government choose to accelerate this one over other public services which are currently in trouble? It seems strange. Clearly, as other speakers have said, it is not a very long measure, and noble Lords will be happy to know that my speech will be shorter.

At the heart of this, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, the intent of the measure is that the strike-day service from Border Force should be no less effective than on a non-strike day, and services should cover all the areas normally running—port and airport services, passport services and so on—as the Minister has set out. I do not need to explain that when the minimum service level is no less effective than the everyday service level, that basically means almost everybody is required to go to work. In this case, the estimate from the TUC is that 70% to 75% of the employees of Border Force on a normal day will be required to attend on a strike day.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Fox

Report stage
Tuesday 20th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I apologise for my croakiness; the hay fever is definitely winning. I join others in welcoming, in these government amendments, that we have seen significant change since Committee. It is worth highlighting a couple of comments from the Minister’s introduction. He said that the aim of the Bill to drive dirty money out of the UK; I hope we can all agree that that is essential. He also said that we had seen so many people abusing our open system; I think we have to acknowledge that we invited those people in, and that that is the situation we created. We are now trying to fix it.

In that light, I very much welcome the fact that the Minister said that we need to see how these changes bed in before going significantly further. I want to make sure that we acknowledge, and see on the record, the fact that the Government have acknowledged that this is not enough, and that a lot more will need to be done, in what is, after all, as described by UK Finance,

“the fraud capital of the world”.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, there are political Bills, where the House divides on political issues and argues among itself, and there are Bills of practical importance, when the House can come together and pull in the same direction. We will not all agree about everything, but the motives behind what we are proposing have been similar. In this case, it is about helping to clear up and clean up a bad situation, and to do so in the best possible way. The Minister and his colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, must be congratulated on their openness and their listening ears. They have not just listened but acted on what they heard, and we should all be grateful that we have moved in this direction.

I am pleased that I can agree with the noble Lords, Lord Leigh of Hurley and Lord Agnew, in their characterisation of these changes, which are important. I think the change to the mission of Companies House is absolutely fundamental. It is vital that it is there, and it then plays to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, about the culture change, as well as, I think, giving the flexibility and understanding that—again, as the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, said—this is going to be a mobile struggle that we have to move forward.

This group of amendments is followed by other groups which are other examples of where listening has turned into positive changes. From these Benches, we are really pleased that we are moving in this direction, and are grateful that we have done that. As we have heard, the Bill is improving as a result. So we are very supportive of these measures, and continue to be supportive of the other measures that we will hear about later.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Fox

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I agree with the entirety of Amendment 41A from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, while agreeing with only half his reasoning. I entirely agree that, as we discussed at length in Committee, this is essentially impossible to calculate and creates a great deal of legal uncertainty. Where I disagree with him is that I would very much like to have seen non-regression clauses for the environment, public health, workers’ rights and a whole range of other things in the Bill.

Practically, what we are doing with the clause at the moment, if it is implemented, is creating a guaranteed regression of workers’ rights, food standards and environmental standards. If we do not have regulation of business, we will certainly see at least some cowboy businesses taking advantage of a reduction in regulation. That of course will not be in the interests of businesses that want to do the right thing on the environment, public health or workers’ rights.

I spent a great deal of time during the passage of the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act arguing for non-regression clauses. What the Government are currently giving us is a guaranteed regression clause, and that really should not be acceptable.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, as the proposer of Amendment 45, which is also in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, I feel a terrible weight resting on my shoulders as a result of the preface from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, because this is the amendment that seeks to remove Clause 16 and I fear that I am not going to reach the billing that he gave us.

Over the course of this session, we have heard numerous arguments about the way in which the Bill more and more removes Parliament from the process of revocation and reform. I am not going to rehearse all those arguments again, because your Lordships have heard them both on Report and in Committee. Clause 16 is one of the key parts of the machinery in the Bill to govern how retained EU law can be reformed. There is an argument for removing the clause altogether, but I have bowed to the spirit of scrutiny rather than total oblivion and, as such, I do not intend to move the amendment.

As we have already heard in advance from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the provision that causes most concern is Clause 16(5), which mandates the nature of any reform of REUL to be deregulation—and deregulation only. The point the noble Lord made is about how we measure the sum of regulation. There was all sorts of debate in Committee. Is it the total of the changes across a group of amendments or a section of amendments? Is it each amendment by itself? These questions were never satisfactorily answered in Committee, so perhaps during Report the Minister can tell us how the amount of regulation will be measured. In other words, can one increase in regulation be balanced by two decreases in regulation through adjacent provisions, for example? We have not had answers to that.

Essentially, the spirit of the Bill is that there can be no increase in the “burden”—according to the Bill—caused by this reformed retained EU law. Clause 16(10) defines burden, with its paragraph (b) including “administrative inconvenience”, but one person’s administrative inconvenience is another’s life-saving safety measure. It depends on which direction you look at it. Clause 16(10)(d) includes

“an obstacle to efficiency, productivity or profitability”

as a burden. Again, what may seem an obstacle to one group may be existentially important to another.

As I said, I am not aiming to push this amendment to a vote. We are seeing amendments that are putting some safeguards in place. The noble Lord mentioned Amendment 76, which we anticipate. I am anticipating Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, where we will talk about non-regression, and Amendment 50, which will come up shortly. These are other important pieces to put in place to try to draw the majority of the sting from Clause 16.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Fox

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, this is a mixed set of amendments. I do not think that we will debate the philosophy of what a fact is, although we may come back to that in a few minutes. I rise to move Amendment 102 on behalf of my noble friend Lord Wallace and to speak to both an amendment in my name and a series of amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker.

Amendment 102 refers to tier 1 investor visas, otherwise known as golden visas. As I am sure the Minister will jump up and tell me, the scheme was closed relatively recently, but that is not the point of this amendment. We know that the scheme allowed individuals with a high net worth into the UK through the investment of large sums. We also know that, during its operation, it became increasingly clear that there was abuse, or the possibility of abuse. Visa beneficiaries under the scheme largely came from Russia, former USSR states and China, more so than from any other third country. It must have been clear to the Home Office and others that the sources of the wealth of many of these applicants were dubious at best.

The scheme was closed in February 2022. When it closed, the Government promised a review into so-called golden visas, because they were clearly an issue and something that needed to be reviewed so that we could find out what went wrong and ensure that future decisions did not make similar mistakes. It was, therefore, an object of some despair when, instead of publishing the findings of the review in full, the Home Secretary published a Written Statement in January this year with a summary of the review’s findings. The Statement told us what we already knew, in fact, but not much more. The scheme had been used by individuals who were, to quote the Statement,

“at high risk of having obtained wealth through corruption or other illicit financial activity, and/or being engaged in serious and organised crime”.

It also told us that this concerned a

“small minority of individuals”

who had obtained visas under the tier 1 investor route but gave no indication of the actual figures on where a risk had been identified. More than 6,000 visa holders were reviewed. What is a “small minority” of 6,000? How many were at risk?

We also know that 10 oligarchs who had been sanctioned as part of the response to Russian aggression in Ukraine used this scheme. How many more applicants with ties to Putin have been given visas that allowed them to embed themselves in the UK economy and UK society? Are any still in the UK? If so, have they gone through the process of acquiring citizenship? The Statement answered none of these questions.

This amendment would require the findings of the review, where they relate to economic crime, to be published in full. It is a review of a scheme that, according to the Home Office, attracted a disproportionate number of applicants from the countries identified as being particularly relevant to cross-border money-laundering risks faced and posed by the UK. As I said, the scheme benefited Russian and Chinese oligarchs above all. Key questions remain unanswered. Parliament needs to know what went wrong so that we can hold the Government to account in future. We are entitled to know more about what the Home Office conducted in this review and the impetus that it gave to various other elements of what we are seeing now. In other words, has anything learned from the review seen its way into the legislation that we are now talking about? If not, why not?

The refusal to publish either this report or the fuller details of Russian penetration into British politics, which the ISC recommended should be published, makes it difficult not to conclude that the Conservative Government have some significant and embarrassing issues to hide, most probably around donations to the party. If the Minister has nothing to hide, I am sure that he will be able to announce the publication of these reports.

As I said, I also want to speak to Amendment 104 in my name, which has, to some extent, a similar motive to the three amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. Without putting words in the noble Lord’s mouth, I suspect that, like me, he is an enforcement sceptic. He is sceptical not about the need for enforcement but that sufficient enforcement will support the legislation we have spent all this time debating. My amendment is one way of trying to expose the resources and the effect that they are having. I am sure that the Minister will step forward and tell us that the NCA publishes an annual plan but Amendment 104, particularly subsection (3) of its proposed new clause, sets out a rather different set of things that we would need to know but which are not currently included in the annual plan published by the NCA.

I am quite happy to support other ways of doing this, which the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, is probing, but, at the heart of this, Parliament needs to know how effective enforcement is and that the primary agency running the enforcement process has the resources it needs in order to meet the challenges that it faces. Those challenges are getting bigger, harder and more sophisticated every day. This is one way of exposing whether the resources are sufficient and what Parliament needs to worry about in future in terms of delivering support to agencies so that they can actually enforce these things. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 102 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I begin by quoting the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, who chairs of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Speaking in this Room last year, he said that

“we have clearly, as a matter of policy, turned a blind eye to the perpetrators of corruption overseas using London for business or leisure purposes”.—[Official Report, 13/10/22; col. GC 156.]

The golden visa scheme was clearly a significant part of that issue, as highlighted by the noble Lord.

I begin by paying great tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who has been an absolute terrier—no, that sounds too small. A bulldog is better.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Fox

Committee stage
Thursday 27th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow that powerful, comprehensive and, I think, highly persuasive speech from the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I will be extremely brief but, given there was not space to attach my name to this amendment, I wanted to briefly offer Green support. I hardly need to declare my position as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has already done that, but I will do so for the record.

I just want to make two points. I am perhaps slightly less optimistic than the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who said that if we create this law, the sanctioned individuals will declare. However, this amendment would create a weapon to use against them when they do not. So I would perhaps frame that slightly differently. This really relates to the debate on the previous day in Committee when we talked about SLAPPs. We know the limitations—we have just been discussing the limitations of the resourcing and capacity of our enforcement vehicles. It will likely very often be NGOs and journalists who expose this, but if we bring in the anti-SLAPP rules and this rule, we will see the seizures actually happening and the Bill being effective.

Secondly, through this Bill we are aiming—as we aimed with the previous economic crime Bill—to close lots of loopholes. I assume, however, that not even the Minister will say that, once we have done all this, everything will be fixed and we will not have any future problems. As evidence for that, in August last year the register of overseas entities came in and yet the figures show that little more than half the relevant properties owned by overseas companies have been declared.

We in this Committee are looking at making a difference not just in theory but in practice, and that is what this amendment would do.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to support the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on this amendment. I have supported him on a number of amendments in other areas, and I have learned not to do too much research because however much you have done, he will have said it by the time you get the chance to say it.

The Government have recognised the importance of asset seizure. Back in the heady days of March 2022, the then Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, James Cartlidge—he has of course moved on since then—said that the Government were looking at

“how we can go further to crack down on illicit money in British property, including considering temporary asset seizures beyond the freezing regime that we already have in place”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/22; col. 147.]

However, that is not an easy task, and this is a bit more than closing a few loopholes. Many experts have flagged risks relating to seizing assets—I am sure that the Minister will remind us of that when we come to it—particularly without the necessary proof of criminality. For assets belonging to individual oligarchs, concerns have been raised over the rule of law, due process and property rights. In the case of state assets, objections include sovereign immunity—something that I think I mentioned in a previous debate—and the fear that other states may withdraw their reserves. This is a big issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned. When we focus on the Russian sanctions, for example, we see that the UK has frozen billions of pounds of Russian assets under the sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation—OFSI—has reported that £18 billion owned by individuals and entities associated with Russia’s regime has been frozen since the beginning of that war. Some estimates suggest that more than £40 billion could be frozen or immobilised if further sanctions were put in place.

However, assets frozen under sanctions are passive. Funds frozen under the UK sanctions regime cannot be retrieved or repurposed. In fact, these should be returned at the end of the war if sanctions are lifted. Meanwhile, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, pointed out, the UK is asking the taxpayer to fund the war effort and, no doubt, the repair of Ukraine if and when we get to that point. So, there is quite a lot at stake.

Amendment 85 is a way of trying to do this and cut through the complication relatively simply and ingeniously —for which I claim no credit. It seeks to strengthen the UK sanctions regime and find a route that allows us to recover these frozen assets, which have been concealed in the past. As we have heard, the mechanism we propose would impose a duty on sanctioned persons proactively to disclose all their assets held in the UK and criminalise the failure to disclose such assets as a form of sanctions evasion.

If a sanctioned person fails to declare all their assets and further assets are uncovered by the authorities, they are guilty of a criminal offence—sanctions evasion. Those undisclosed assets may then be seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. This seizure would be subject to the same safeguards that courts currently uphold in criminal and civil recovery processes, following due process and ensuring that any deprivation of private property is not disproportionate to the public interest in seizing the proceeds of crime.

Given that sanctions evasion is already a criminal offence in the UK, this amendment would be a straightforward way rapidly to scale up assets that may be susceptible to seizure. Adding a requirement to disclose all assets held within six months prior to designation would also capture assets such as those set out by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. It is for these reasons that we support this amendment.

Trade Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Fox

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I shall speak first, briefly, to linked Amendments 70 and 95, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I note that a Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, today found himself getting some attention for a claim that traders were taking a “head-in-the-sand” approach to trade post Brexit. I do not think that I could do better in response than quote the chief operating officer of the Food and Drink Federation:

“If any traders have their head in the sand it’s because, after many frustrating months awaiting critical answers, they probably think it’s more likely they’ll find those answers in the sand than they will from the Government.”


That was coming from an organisation which is not, I think it would be fair to say, a natural critic of the Government. I hope that the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, do not accurately reflect the view of the Government, and in particular that they do not indicate that they do not understand the extremely difficult position of small businesses, with so much else to deal with at the moment. We do not want to risk seeing them battered further on an uneven playing field by larger firms that are more likely to have the resources to react—something to which the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, just alluded.

I want to speak mostly to Amendment 93, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I appreciate the chance to support an amendment in his name, since we have had some disagreement on other elements of this Bill. I think that this is the first time that the issue of free zones has come up in this Committee, and I want to express the Green group’s strong opposition to the whole concept, noting that there were seven free ports in the UK at various points between 1984 and 2012 and that they were seen to have failed. Going back to the 1980s is surely not the answer for today.

I also note that the European Greens have been strong in their opposition, highlighting the links of free ports and free enterprise zones to tax avoidance, as exposed in the Madeira papers. To quote the historian, Quinn Slobodian, what they do is

“splinter the world into jurisdictions engaged in a constant competition to attract multinational companies, locking nations into a global ‘place war’ to offer businesses the most enticing incentives and the lowest labour costs.”

However, today we are mostly focusing not on the principle but on what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has created in his amendment, which is at least the chance of some democratic oversight and, crucially, a commitment to some local consultation. I would like to see in this amendment both a stronger position on local consultation and national oversight, noting that the impact is not only in the immediate area but in other economically similar areas, which are likely to see a loss of business and jobs to new zones. However, I hope we can return to that on Report. I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s response and perhaps what plans the Government have, particularly on local consultation and oversight, if they wish to push ahead with this revival of an old, neoliberal failure.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, when I saw this grouping, I hoped that these speeches would identify the golden thread that linked them together. There is not one, so I will speak to them separately. I will talk to Amendment 93, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, before coming to the other two.

I, too, agree with the noble Lord’s conjecture that there should be some parliamentary process that brings these free zones into being. I am not a fan of them, and I do not think our party is either. We think that they tend to move activity around rather than create new or larger activity, but that is not the point that we are here to debate, which is how these things are brought about and approved. I do not know about your Lordships, but I have been involved in a hell of a lot of statutory instruments in the past while, and they seem to be on some very big issues and some very trivial issues. It seems that there is no allergy in your Lordships’ House to taking on statutory instruments and trying to make decisions. Therefore to add a few more—I guess there would be a few free zones—does not seem a hugely controversial issue.

On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about applications coming in that had not had any form of local consultation, I can give him one idea of where people might object. There will almost certainly be planning things that will happen subsequent to the creation of a free zone, unless it is already an industrial zone. If you look at the sprawl outside airports, you start to see distribution centres and warehousing and all sorts of planning things. If I was a local resident living on the edge of or just outside somewhere that wanted to be a free zone, I would start to worry about some of those kinds of issues. So traditional planning issues would come forward—some would call them nimby and others straightforward—which would create problems, and do so for local politicians if not national ones. I am therefore very supportive of Amendment 93.

On Amendments 70 and 95, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said that it would not work, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said that manufacturers and so on need to embrace change. They may be right in both those instances, but I should caution a little compassion for the individuals concerned who are trying to make a business work. They are trying to do so when they still do not know what the rules are and in the face of all sorts of other pressures, not least Covid but also, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said, immense international pressure and price pressure on what they are trying to do. Therefore, while the noble Baronesses might be right, I ask them, and in particular the Minister, to approach this with some compassion. Change is easy enough for some people. My father milked cows. You do not suddenly go from producing milk to producing pork pies overnight. Those kinds of changes can and do happen, but they do not happen at the turn of the year, when, eventually, the rules emerge.

I have one final point. Perhaps all of us could spend some time reading the latest edition of the GB-EU border operating model. I think my colleague my noble friend Lord Purvis, has mentioned it before. It should be compulsory reading for everyone working on this Bill. It is 138 pages, and every page has a list of at least 10 to 20 things that have either been changed or inserted in the latest edition, which was published last week. These are the things these people who have to change or get on with it have to embrace. It is hugely difficult to understand; it is a massive issue. So, the helpful slogan

“The UK’s new start: let’s get going”


is somewhat missing the point.

There is a huge amount to be done between now and the turn of the year, and the Government and the people in this Chamber need to have some air of understanding the extent to which it is threatening people’s livelihoods and putting them under pressure. These amendments are just two ways of trying to alleviate that. Overall, there has to be a wider understanding of the role of government in getting businesses past this huge change which is happening.